By reading the end of the story, the author Herman Melville describes Benito Cereno as a hero who has managed to save his life and the lives of some Spanish sailors from the rebelled slaves. We see that Benito Cereno plays a significant role to save his fellow Spanish who survived from the desease and the repression of the slaves. The writer depicts enslavement as something that is normal by expressing his concern about what has happening to the sailors instead condemning the practice of slavery. In the novel, we understand that the goal of the slaves in San Dominic ship was not to kill Benito Cereno and the sailors but to be taken back to Africa, particularly Senegal in order to recover their freedom. On the other hand, slaves were not organized to handle the situation, sometimes they were not respecting the commandment of their leader Babo. At the conclusion, both slaves and Spanish sailors were in a difficult situation to protect their lives but, I found that it is important to sympathize for the slaves who were taken in force from their peaceful family and countries to be treated without no dignity in America. As we know about slavery stories in America, these slaves were exploited in the countryside without no respect, they didn’t have enough food to eat, were subject to be killed at any time and were considered as a property. At some passage of the novel, Captain Delano can be considered as a good person because he ordered to bring water, supplies etc. for the people who were in San Dominic boat and invited Benito Cereno to take coffee with him in his boat. On the other hand, Captain Delano shows the cruelty by ordering to take guns and kill many of slaves in board of San Dominic and finally captured Babo who was found guilty of murder and stealing a ship and was hanged.

Amadou Hampathe Ba

In the chapter 6 “Narrative” by Jonathan Culler, the author discusses about the correlation between event, plot and discourse. We realize that in the twentieth, the narrative has become the significant instrument in the literary education. For my example, I would like to talk about the novel “The strange destiny of Wangrin” by Amadou Hampathe Ba. The event took place in west Africa during the colonization. Wangrin was a translator of French to the local language (dialect), he was employed by the French colony. He became very famous in his region and make wealth because of the corruption in the way he was interpreting the language to the local population. He was a person who believed in magic and finally end his life in a tragic situation. For many west African intellectuals, the way the author related the event to a narrative history show how writers can inspire readers in the articulation and presentation of the language. To make sense of the history, the author Amadou Hampathe Ba uses rhythm, chronology and arguments to give sense and pleasure to the readers about the event. The plot was very educative and is considered as set of knowledge. Furthermore, the narration of the story was discoursed because it shows how the writing explains the social situation of the population during the colonization.

In the section “What stories do” the author Culler presents the importance of the stories, its effects on our society. The benefit of the function of the story is multiple, it gives us a pleasure of reading and interact with people in a fictional situation. Also, the stories teach us about the world by helping readers to be able to analyze real or unreal events because some novel relate real facts or fictions. For that reason, it is one of the best ways to improve our knowledge.

In the poem “The Sea is History” by Derek Walcott, we can identify poetic technique that Culler describes in chapter 5 and the first four lines in this poem illustrate that fact. in the first line he asks, “where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?” He wants to attire our attentions by expressing an emotion that push us to think and develop our knowledge about the past events. In the second line he also asks, “where is your tribal memory?”, he uses convention of unity to give correlation between these two lines and he ends the second line by using the world “sirs” that is an important feeling of responsibility. In the third line, he says all these things are “in that grey vault”. He employs the words “grey” to express the color that is more perceptible by the readers and use “that” to show the closeness of the vault. Also, he repeats two times the words “sea” to be understood by the readers and we can interpret the “sea” as equal to the time, the past and the history where everything is consumed and would finally disappear. In the fourth line he writes that “has locked them up” by making allusion to the sea. At the end, he writes that “The sea is History”, he uses metaphor to compare the sea to the history that can be considered as a place where everything is stocked and finally would disappear. In this part of the poem, the author doesn’t use contrast but use a logical continuity to express his ideas. This procedure creates meaning of the poem and let readers follows the flow of the rhyme.

In the “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation” by Culler, the author discusses the connection between language and meaning. One of the ideas from this chapter that attract my attention is literature language can have different meaning. The understanding of the language depends to the meaning we accord to the words, the utterance we hear and how the text is structured.  There are different kind of writers, some of them are very simple and clear in their words and sentences they use to communicate with the readers but, others use some complex texts in their writing. For this kind of group, sometimes we can have some difficulties to understand the meaning of the text because of the style and form of the words they use. The meaning of the words can have different interpretation and that fact can change the meaning of the text. Furthermore, the utterance of the words can also give another signification of the text. In some cases, the sentence is written very simple, but the meaning of the language requires deep reflection to be understood. For some writers who use fiction to express their opinion, the meaning of the text can be related to the real situation which indirectly connected to text, that mean we have to be able to analyze deeply the text to understand the text. Also, in some particular situation our differences, for example our culture or origin can influence to the interpretation of the text, we can see or read the text in different angles. In addition, language of literature is one of the ways to learn how we can articulate words and give signification to the words.

In the “The nature of literature”, the author Culler defines “literature” from several angles. I found the angle “literature as fiction” the most interesting and useful. There are many ways to interpret or create some situations that can be connected to the real world. The fiction writers, by their wonderful literary work let readers to develop their experience of thinking into the imaginary world. They create events, actors, audiences and places in the perfect organized unreal society that is not related to the historical events. Sometimes, the author can focus to the past events by adding some elements of fiction to complete some miss information or knowledge to complete the history. As it is said in the chapter, the speaker plays an important role in the interpretation of the imaginary world, we have to consider his attitude and life experience. The writer could be someone who is happy or sad or fighting for social justice etc. Therefore, he can include his real life or others life into the situation of fiction to express his opinion. The freedom of denouncing something by using fiction without pointing directly to the real event is very interesting, particularly in the dictatorial countries where the freedom of speech is restricted. Also, where activists for human right, authors and journalists are persecuted.

1. In the Literary Theory by Jonathan Culler, the most of important aspect of this section of the chapter is how it is difficult to give a definition of literature. According to the author, a child or some ordinary people can think it is easy to define literature but for the specialist in that field, to give a definition of literature we have to look many aspects. In some part of the chapter, the writer said for example the historians explain how an event happen but not why. Furthermore, the author gives some correlation between the weed that is a physical thing to the literature that is a collection of words in the sentences that explain a real or unreal fact. It is important to think about the definition of the literature as other subjects for example biology, chemistry, math etc. have their definitions, but according to the writer in this chapter it is difficult to provide a specific definition of literature for the specialists.
2. As I read this chapter, I am wondering if the conclusion he gave in page 28 “literature, we might conclude, is a speech act or textual event that elicits certain kinds of attention.” Could be consensual for many specialists in literature?